At about this time last year, a very large and extremely friendly house cat found himself alone on the streets of Brooklyn.

He could have been abandoned, or he could have slipped out when someone wasn’t looking, I don’t know. Either way, last winter was a brutal one in New York City,  so it is fortunate that this cat found his way to a marina, where he came across a TNR team — an acronym that stands for trap, neuter, release, actions meant to reduce a feral cat population.

He walked up to group,  meowed an introduction, and made it clear he was by no means a feral cat. In this way, he ended up in the care of the excellent people at the Picasso Veterinary Fund, one of the coolest animal charities anywhere.

They introduced me to this goofy but wily survivor of a feline.

We named him Henry, and he is spending this winter in considerably more comfort than he did last year.

I’m bringing all this up because, hello, my name is Alison and I am a cat person. (I greatly prefer this title to “crazy cat lady”. ) This is not an affection that I leave at home when I travel. In reviewing my travel photos from last year, I have noticed that nary a trip passes without me snapping the photo of some cat or another.

I’ve also noticed that I’m not the only person setting up the impromptu feline photography sessions. For instance, many, many people photographed this cat sleeping outside Tedeschi Winery in Maui.  Almost everyone made the joke about him having had a little too much at the tasting room.

I haven’t read many stories about this phenomenon of travelers photographing strange cats. I realize it’s deeply uncool. I don’t care.

So although there are many reasons to visit the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson, I submit that cat people everywhere should not miss Cat Canyon, where you can observe bobcat and ocelot, pictured below. Obviously, these make great additions to any cat photography collection. Even your non-cat-loving friends will admire them.

Ten years on, it’s still hard to get my head around the events of 9/11.  Watching the news from the other side of the world, my initial thought was this has to be some sort of mistake, a misguided ‘war of the worlds’ type scenario.  But sadly, it wasn’t. The unthinkable had happened – planes hijacked by terrorists had flown into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.  In those moments life as we knew it changed forever.

Nothing will bring back the Twin Towers or the security we felt prior to 9/11.  But, thanks to augmented reality technology, native New Yorker Brian August has found a way to put the WTC Twin Towers back in the picture.

August’s 110 Stories App works within a 40 mile radius of the former Twin Towers site. Using radar, the App determines the direction the smartphone needs to be pointed.  By complying with the directions, the user sees not only an image of their immediate skyline but also a pencil-like drawing of the Twin Towers.

After taking a picture, the user is encouraged to upload the image or images to the 110 Stories website to share with the world with the hope of creating a repository of memories about the World Trade Center.

While the augmented reality component of the App is only of use for those in New York City, anyone around the world can access the pictures and stories and share in the memories via the 110 Stories website.

Eventually Brian August hopes to complement the cyberspace version of 110 Stories with public art installations featuring tower outlines placed in 110 prime viewing spots in the tri-state area from which one used easily see the iconic towers.

Last week, I went to the Aperture Gallery to catch the last day of a small installation of Tim Hetherington‘s work.  On display was Diary, an experimental 19 minute film that was a memoir of his life as a war photographer/documentary film maker — a life which ended this past April, on the job in Libya. There was also Sleeping Soldiers, which was filmed at the same time as Restrepo.

You can see both films online here; Sleeping Soldiers was displayed on three screen at the gallery and it’s not quite the same for home viewing, but Diary loses none of its power displayed n the computer.

I’m not a war photographer, or a war journalist, obviously. While I have visited many troubled countries (and name me one country that’s trouble-free), I don’t tend to find myself in places that feature open gun fire. I tend to travel to places where people like to vacation. So I really didn’t really want to feel a tug of identification with the dislocation that Hetherington captures in Diary — the strange juxtaposition of life at home and life in places far less comfortable — frankly, I don’t think I’ve earned it. At the time that Hetherington was gathering his footage, I was mostly traveling in the world’s prettier, peaceful places.

In fact, it is hard to believe that we were traveling on the same planet, at the same time.

In 2008, a chance purchase at a local furniture and antiques auction was about to change John Maloof’s life. Of course, he didn’t know that at the time. He had only purchased the box of old photographs on the off chance that it might contain some historic pictures of Portage Park for a book he was co-authoring.

It didn’t.

Instead, it contained something much, much more valuable – the stunning work of Vivian Maier, an unknown street photographer who captured the essence and the people of Chicago during the 1950s and 60s.

Discovering exactly who Vivian Maier was, how she developed her extraordinary vision, and introducing her work to the world has been Maloof’s focus ever since.

He started by displaying some of Maier’s work on a blog vivianmaier.com and linked it to Flickr, the online photo sharing website. From there, it didn’t take long for Maier’s work to go viral and gain a fanatical following.

The Hidden World of Vivian Maier from The Kitchen Sisters on Vimeo.

Exhibitions of her photographs were shown in Denmark and Norway last year, and this year the Chicago Cultural Center is hosting a Vivian Maier Exhibition from January to April.

Meanwhile, Maloof, together with Anthony Rydzon, and award-winning Danish documentary film maker, Lars Mortensen, formed ToneLoof Productions, a Chicago based documentary film production company, with the goal of producing a film (and book) based on the discovery of photographer Vivian Maier.

They joined Kickstarter to help fund the project, with a goal of raising $20,000. With 21 days left, over $90,000 has already been donated, well exceeeding their original goal.

Backers are offered a number of different incentives to donate, from receiving one of Vivian Maier’s actual film spools from a roll that has been developed (complete with authenticity paperwork) to a digital download or hard copy DVD of the completed film and a copy of the completed book, depending on the amount donated.

For an in depth look into John Maloof’s amazing discovery, watch this Vivian Maier report from Chicago Tonight.

In winter, Ireland takes on a character of quiet and mystical reserve even more than it has during flourishing days of summer or the unsettled weather of spring and autumn. You catch a hint of this as daylight turns early to night in the cities ands towns. Once you get beyond them, though, the idea of Ireland as a land of legends becomes apparent in what you see around you every moment of every day.

A bit of music which arises from these landscapes and ideas
T with the Maggies
the farthest wave

These photographs were taken in Down and Louth, and are copyrighted. Thank you for respecting this.